Her Family Followed Branham. She Chose Jesus

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Vonda Kaye, former child of the message. Vonda, it's good to have you on and to introduce you as former child of the message, not former member. It's, um, I've actually wanted to have somebody on who was in that mindset because there's quite a difference, and yet at the same time, it might be just as impactful on the child. And so, very glad to have you on. Maybe if you could begin by telling everyone

just a little bit about yourself. I was five years old when my parents started changing all the rules. They were both Christians, they both knew the Lord Jesus, but daddy met these missionaries and they introduced Branham to him and that changed their world. They changed, they were different people. And when they started telling us all the different rules at five years old, I said, Jesus never said that. So, my mother was not happy with me, I'll just say that.

Because Jesus didn't say most of this and I already knew him personally, so I had a good foundation. And ever since then, it's just been me and the Lord and I love my parents, they're both gone now.

I love them dearly, I love my family, six siblings. It was good, but I was the black sheep. No matter what we're said on the tapes, I would find that there were contradictions and that wasn't what Jesus said and that bothered me. So, the more that I tried to explain it to my parents even as a young teenager, then it just got worse and worse and worse. But I was told only believe.

So, I had to look out believe and I read my Bible, which really comes in handy when you're wanting to find the Lord. And there's a lot of things about belief and it not only is a beautiful thing where when you believe in Christ, you're saved. But if you don't believe in Christ, that's problem. And there's different ways to believe. You can just think, oh, maybe that's right, I think I'll follow that trail. And there is a complete sellout of your soul.

And I chose the complete cell out of my soul to the Lord, not to brand them. I can't even imagine what that would have been like as a child. Once you tell the people, I choose to follow Jesus, but I don't choose to follow brand them.

It's like they can't understand this. How does this work? How can you follow Jesus and not brand them? The two have become so intertwined in their mind that they just can't take it. What happened after that? Did people cut you off? Or did they still come around you?

There were a lot of people that came through a couple and their two daughters. It came through our house quite often after that for years. And it was impressive the way that they followed him.

I truly am impressed the way people can just dig in and hang on if it's the right thing. But there were times that one time in particular where my dad sat me down as a young teenager and played, we still had the reel to reel them.

And he played over and over and over the same little story. Do you remember when he talked about the young girl that was tried to leave the message and went crazy? I do. That's the one.

And I wasn't a nurse then, but I still realized that I've never seen anybody in so much pain their eyes popped out. It was like, Danny, you're smart. Then what? We had so many stories of people who left and these awful, awful things would happen to them.

I remember growing up with a story. I don't know if other people remember this who were listening, but we talked about some person who was in their teenage years and they decided they were going to leave and they wrote a motorcycle and they left the church.

And then one day there was going over a hill and hit a semi head on and flew 40 feet in the air. And you hear things like that and it may be true, it may not, but it had one intention and that was really to drive fear into your heart so that you wouldn't leave.

And fear is the opposite of love. Jesus Christ is love and He casts it out all fear because fear hath torment. And I was done being tormented. So I took my opportunity and when he walked into the other room and I casually walked out the back door.

Well, I heard the door close and I felt him getting closer because I was walking fast, deliberate. And I hear him feel him getting closer and closer when he was about two feet from me.

I spun around, looked at him dead in the eye and I said, Daddy, this is how it is. I would rather die like that than to live this lie. Wow, how did you react to that?

The expression was, ah, sure, but still kind of... And of like really, he was so confused about that statement. And my daddy's a scientist, he's a rocket scientist. He's smart. And if all for, I don't know how they fell for this.

Mama wears a very intelligent woman. But I think they were lonely at the time. And the couple that introduced it were absolutely beautiful. They were beautiful people. And the more they talked, the more the more that they just gobbled it up.

They would come to our house. They would do the communion and the footwashing. And you know, that's all real nice. But I told my mother early on, I said, when that lady hugged me, she only did it one time.

When I was about 11, and I said, when she hugs me, I feel a dagger in her hand. She hates me. And that was the message to me was beautiful people hate me. It's so sad.

We were taught falsely what love was. We would have these sermons. You probably heard them as well. We're talking about divine love, how divine love projects. And then when put into action, it was literally, I'm going to bite your head off.

If you don't follow what I believe. Now, that particular couple, I laugh now at the time I cried. But I laugh now. I was pregnant with my second child. I lived in a little trailer, not too far from my parents' house.

And the couple brought my parents. And I let them in because my parents were with them. I pretty much wasn't real happy to be around them. But anyway, I let them in and hear this man.

He's got his little Bible open in his hand, which looked beautiful, beautiful picture. And then they kind of go round me a little bit. And he says, we're done. We have come to, this is a quote, we have come to turn your soul over to the toll.

And I said, we have a problem here. You don't own my soul. And the other problem is it's the body that's turned over in the Bible, not the soul. So it's time for you to leave.

I remember the moment that they told the congregation the same thing about me. The thought went through my head. The first thought goes through your head is, oh no. What have they just done?

Did I make the right decision? But then the second thought, kind of like you, well, they don't even have the power to do this. Why are they saying this? And I realized later, years later, even though it was my grandfather that did this, I realized that it wasn't so much for me that he did it.

It was for the rest of the people that were there. John is leaving. You guys need to stay here. So let's scare the heck out of you. That's really what they were doing. And that's part of the reason why I really wanted to have somebody on who was a child of the message, but not a member of the message.

Because you're not under that same mindset. You're not held captive. by the same type of fear, but yet at the same time, you're in a family that is held captive by fear. So it has this huge effect on you that is quite different than anybody else who's in the group. I tried really, really, really hard to believe it, to follow, to try, to find substance.

I, oh, you can imagine as a little girl, I was second born, the five younger under me grew up on my hip. I loved my, my siblings and my parents. And I wanted their approval. Every child does.

They loved me. I, I will never doubt that. They loved me. But they couldn't, they just didn't know what to do with me because I had truth and they loved their lie. So they, they just didn't know what to do. And I didn't either. No, there, there's no manual for this one. It's in the Bible, which have to look for it. So it gets complicated. Absolutely. You know, whenever you're a child of the message, and you're not part of the message, everyone views you as the outsider. It's a very much and us versus them mentality. You're not one of us. You're different than the rest of us.

And so you grew up in that mindset, well, why am I different? I'm, I'm just like the rest, you know. So it affects the psychologically it affects you in ways that it's very hard to overcome because you have to find your own support group. You're in a group that are supporting each other, but they're excluding you from their support. Exactly. Well, I knew who my support group was. And that was the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a father, son, and Holy Ghost. That was my support group that I grew up that way. Never had friends. You know, just even till today, I don't have a lot of close friends

because it's a habit, but I'm okay with that because I do know the Lord. Another funny thing about this is not just fear, but it's also rejection. I was in the Brannum Tabernacle quite a few times over the years and with my parents and without failure, I think maybe four or five times, without failure. Every time I walked in, I'd already had my children. They were with me, and these beautiful ladies, gorgeous hair, nice dresses, beautiful attitude, right up until they walked up to me. And they would say, are you one of those Appleton girls? And I knew what was coming

next, and I would stand tall and say, yes, the one that's divorced. And yes, I am. And they literally turned their back on me and walked away. Every single time. And I knew what was coming. And I just, you know, my heart, I'm just praying for them. Lord, give them some love, show them some love.

Yes, I've been divorced. If I hadn't been, I'd been dead. They didn't know that. The real problem as a church, they're supposed to help and support the people and share the gospel. with them. But it really, what I've learned is it's not really about the gospel. It's really about whether they connected to the central figure, which was Brannum. If you connected, you had the gospel already. You didn't really have to share it. So there's this weird symbiotic bond between the the people and and William Brannum. You growing up outside of that, you didn't have that bond. And so they saw you as somebody who, I hate to say it, but they

they viewed people like this as people who were not worthy of receiving the gospel. And I'll bet you can quote Malachi, can't you? Yeah.

Well, I read my Bible, and I couldn't offer that. I ended up with two possibilities. I narrowed everything down. I'm kind of logical for a female. And it had to be either John the Baptist or Jesus. And you can kind of go back and forth on them. You know, he's the one that fulfilled that. And to me, the Lord Jesus Christ is a last prophet. The last priest, the last king, he is everything or he's nothing.

And for those who were unfamiliar, the book of Malachi in the Bible was a scroll. It had no chapters or verses. And at the top, it says the Oracle of Malachi to Israel, it was literally written to Israel, well, Branum, like several others like him, took the last chapter of the book of Malachi and tried to claim that God would send another Elijah in the last days, not just John the Baptist, like most people, most Christians believe, we'd get another one. And then he would allude to the fact that he was it. And so he was, he would basically build up this last chapter of Malachi and

say that this is declaring an end of days messenger and I'm yet. But he would, he would insinuate that he was it. He wouldn't outright say it in most cases. That's really, that's really different than what the Bible says. There again, I don't care what Branum said. It doesn't matter to me.

But he affected me nonetheless because for 20 years, I could not read my King James Bible because I would hear that awful voice, misinterpreting, shining the light on himself. And it's like, I can't do this. You mentioned that you talked to your dad about it. I'm curious how that went because I know people who are in the message who have conversation with their parents and that's it there. In many cases, they're cut off. How did he take it? What did he, did he ever come to terms with the fact that you were not a Branum believer?

I think that my dad finally got it maybe a year or so before he passed. I was there with him the day before he did. And I asked him, I climbed up on the bed with him. He was in his death throws. He wasn't communicating verbally anymore. And I crawled up by his ear and I said, daddy, I have to know. Is there anything?

or anyone between you and the Lord Jesus Christ anymore. I had a friend with me that we're standing in the room and he said, I don't know what you said to your dad that he lit up, he glowed.

You know, you mentioned, you said, I'm logical for a girl. That was the mentality that I had being raised in this. That was the way you looked at men. That's the way that you looked at women.

And what's really weird, I began my career while I was still in it. And when I began an IT career, I entered the IT world. There are so many women that are smarter than me.

And they're logical. Some of them are more logical than me. Now I'm not saying that I don't have logic, but I started to come to terms with the fact that a lot of it was just pure misogynistic training.

Some of it was doctrinal, but a lot of it was just really, really awful way to look at people. You did not view people as equals. You looked at them in a very demeaning way.

I was trained like that. And then whenever I get in the IT world, now I have to try to book that training, try to fight against it because you can't interact with people. And I wondered at that moment, I knew a lot of people who were in careers in the cult.

And I started to wonder about each one of those. How does that work? What did they feel the first time that they tried to interact with somebody of the opposite sex? Did they go through the same struggles that I did?

And I believe that they probably did. I would say so. When I was 19, I wanted to join the Air Force. I love airplanes. I'm just crazy about airplanes and flight. And I took all their tests and was told that I had the highest score they'd ever seen.

Now all we need is a high school diploma. And I said, I don't have one. Oh, did you drop out? No. Why don't you have one? I never went because girls didn't have to go to high school because what's the point?

You're an idiot anyway. So that only leaves one avenue for a woman to fulfill her destiny as a woman before the Lord. And that is to marry. But I was continuously told I was too fat, ugly, and stupid for a man to ever love me.

It was just more ways to cut me down. And I believed it. That was my loving family. So I made some major mistakes. I believe nobody for them but myself. But that's hard on a woman.

And if there's more women out there, I'm not the only one. And it is just, I just can't believe why people are still falling for this. I didn't think that it still existed anymore.

It's just so terrible, the things that he said. You know, when I was in it, I never really thought about how misogynistic it was. I knew there were some of the statements like he would say that females were not worth a good, clean bullet to shoot them, that kind of thing.

I knew that and I had all the answers for what he said. But I never really- is just how deep that ran. Until after I left, I started reading the transcripts, not listening, just reading. When you listen, you're being indoctrinated, and it's very difficult to separate what he says from the indoctrination. But if you just read it, you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that he said that. I would never say that to another human being. He's saying some of the most awful things to females, and he's saying them in such a way that he's trying to charge the men

to say them and join with them. And yet at the same time, we're told that that was the voice of God. The voice of God, really? That's in your King James Bible. That's the Lord speaking to you personally. Now one thing I will say, the man in his crowd had a way of equipping up your faith, and there were healings that happened by listening to the prayer lines on the tapes. I'll give credit where credit is due, but I still don't know exactly where that came from. But I know people, in fact, close people, I said, well, I was listening to a tape, and I was healed. Therefore he must be God.

No. And that's really the problem. It's supposed to be a Christian religion, but their version of Christ is not the Christ of the Bible. It's William Brannum and the Christ of the Bible. It has to be both. If you take one away, and for that reason, you can't really call it Christian. It's more like Brannum Christian. It's this weird connection between the two. Whenever I left, I thought about exactly what you just said. And I know that everybody in the church wouldn't believe me. How can you be healed by listening to a tape? I know people also, who they listened to the recordings and they were healed,

but the problem is they put their emphasis on the healing towards the tape. They said, I listen to this tape. They didn't say God healed me. They said, I listen to the tape, and then I got healed.

And where's God in that connection? So are they worshiping the tape? Are they worshiping the man who's recorded on the tape? I just came to terms with the fact that yes, maybe they did get healed, but they are very strongly mistaken as to where the healing came from. Absolutely. And there's a priming sample of that. My mother called me one day when I was 17. I had a full-time job working as a housekeeper, live in housekeeper. And once again, because of Daddy's insistence, and Mama's just, she just turned from me. I needed my mother. I needed my mother. I was still a teenager,

and you know, that's when you really need your mama and your daddy. Well, they were pushing me so hard and stuck a tape in my purse. And I thought, you know what, I'm going to listen to this.

I was at work, and it was evening, and the healing line was going on. And my mother called me right about then, and I picked up the phone, turned it up, I picked up the phone. And she said, I need you to pray. This is the funny thing. I got to throw this in.

I'm the black sheep. I'm the one who's wrong. But every single time somebody needed healing or intervention, guess how they called. And they would say, pray this way. And I said, I will pray that the lords will be done. It's all I know. And the Lord answered a lot of those prayers. So even though I was useless and dirty, my prayers were answered. And they never connected it. So she said, I've just fallen down and I'm sure my leg is broken. And what's it look like? Well, it's big and black. And I have it elevated. And I can't stand on it.

She started crying. Oh, it hurts so bad. I said, touch it. Chand on it. And she did. And I said, and I was, I just asked the Lord, if you just please heal her. And we just kind of talked a little bit. And then I said, how's your leg? And she went, it's not black.

It's not swollen. And it doesn't hurt. She said, I've been walking around talking. I didn't notice. She said, have you been listening to the tapes? And I said, I had one on, but Jesus healed you.

It was Jesus. Jesus healed you. Nobody else, not me, not him. And she would tell that story often. So you have that where you can see it and turn your head from it. And what's interesting about that story, by the same logic that they get healed because of the tape, they should have said, I get healed because of the telephone because it's coming through the telephone. They just, you know, it's misguided or misdirected focus. And that's really the problem.

And when you misdirect focus for so many years, you start to lose sight of reality. And the bigger thing that I've come to realize is we were in a world that did not really exist. We were in a world where people were creating squirrels just so that they could shoot them. And things that are just unbelievable, he claimed he had a magic sword. William Brennan claimed he had a magic sword.

And I never really, I was a grown adult who never really thought about how silly that was. And yet I'm also a reader of fiction and fantasy. I've read King Arthur, I've read all of the tales of magic swords, knowing that they were fiction. How did I not know that that was fiction?

And I was left with this thought. People who are highly intelligent are actually more susceptible to this because they get so tired through the week working with their brain. They come into church Sunday and they just shut their brain off. So everything that is said, it just goes right in without any critical thinking. And you believe in magic swords and created squirrels.

Well, you see, every lie has to have an element of truth to it to be believed. And we have that double-edged sword, which is the word God. So he had to, you know, I'll take a piece of that too.

and I'll screw that up for humanity, it's just no good. Yeah, why do you do with it? No, it's no good, and you know, we had relics. We had clouds and halos and all of this stuff, and even in some of the churches, their photographs you can look at online, they're worshiping these insane objects rather than Jesus, and yet they don't really recognize they're doing it.

They'll say, I'm worshiping Jesus. No, these are just objects off to the site. Well, why do you have in the church, man? Why would you have a cloud in the church? Speaking of magic and all this stuff, when the first picture I saw of the cloud, I said, wow, and I had friends, I acquaintances in the message, in Tucson.

See, I also met Perry Green. I've been to Marcona's church. I've been around, I hear you mentioning these churches, and it's like, yeah, I relate to that, I've been there. So, this one sweet, sweet, sweet young lady, she had this cloud, and she had the lines around all the angels in the clouds, and I said, will you miss one?

Because this is a tip of a wing, and I'm being facetious, and she goes, oh, you're right. And it's like, no. So, I was in Civil Air Patrol at a very young age, because like I said, I love to fly.

I've read a myriad of books on flight, and pilots, and all this fun stuff, and I happen to know that when you write the sound barrier, you can have a cloud. It can create cloud.

And I was pretty much, I knew that was the truth, until I heard it was a rocket that was set off, and it's like, okay, cleared that up, but it wasn't a man revealing the seven seals.

I wrote revelations. There is one, a lamb that appeared to have been slain, and he took the book, he opened the book. Nobody else, and it was just one more thing. It's like, oh, Lord, I told Daddy about the cloud.

I said, yeah, somebody wrote the sound barrier. Years are right, places are right, everything is right at sound barrier. For me, it was a distraction, because after I left, I started going through that, so for people who don't know William Brannum, claimed that there was this mysterious cloud.

You can look it up on the internet, the cloud of 1963, and he believed that that was seven angels coming to give him the revelation of the seven seals, and that he opened the seven seals.

And it was a distraction because after I left, I'm reading the Bible, and how did I not realize that the Bible said, no man is worthy to open the seals. We were looking so...

intently at the cloud that we didn't even stop to look at what the Bible actually said about the event. And I was showing that to a friend of mine who happened to be in the message.

We were, I was trying to help some people out and it failed miserably because they're so indoctrinated. And they started to say, well, he was more than a man. They started to say, this was more than a man who was, this was God in the man, John.

And I stopped and thought about it. And I just don't see anything in Scripture that would point to a Jesus man who's coming in the last day. It talks about Christ's return, but you have to add text to the Bible to make it work.

And for me, that was the biggest problem. I just simply could not add text to the Bible. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

I mentioned at the beginning of the show that I'm really fascinated to talk to you because I wanted to talk to somebody who was a child of the message, who wasn't in the message.

In other words, somebody who's in the family of a message believing family, who doesn't believe it and everybody knows that they don't believe it. It is such an oddity to talk to somebody who's been in that situation because most children break.

It really takes a person who has a strong will and in your case, strong convictions to stand the ground. And people just simply, they don't know what to do whenever somebody who's in the cult stands the ground.

It defies all of their logic. And so I'm really interested to talk to you. I know that just simply based on my experience, there were things that happened to me because of my belief set that impacted the rest of my life and it will probably still, to some extent, impact the rest of my life.

Some of the ways that we were trained while we were in that mindset was so wrong. And yet at the same time, those are the years, the early years of your childhood, that's your developmental years.

So you really struggle with things. And I look back at some of the triggers that I have now, for example, some of the things that no other person who... wasn't in this movement, will ever have to fight.

And yet, my day, from day to day, you still struggle with some of these things because it was so bad. And that's me who's in a family unit that all had the same mindset.

Now take it a step further to somebody who's far, far more difficult. Somebody who was in the mindset for a period of time broke away while still a child. And then suddenly, everybody turns against them.

That's got to be hard. What are some of the struggles that you struggle with? Oh, I think I started to say earlier, I couldn't read the King James for like 20 years. And I prayed, and I wanted to read it because I know that's the right one.

And I knew then that the others were saying things that just wasn't proper. It's like the same person didn't write these as the one who wrote the King James. It's different things that are different and not the same.

But I read those because I needed the Bible. And every time I would read the King James, I would hear that voice misinterpreting it. And it's so ingrained that you have to, I had to get away from it.

And I kept praying, Lord, take that voice, take that voice. Remove it from me. Clean me up. This is horrible. And he did. Exactly. I mean, people take for granted just how hard it is for somebody who has been indoctrinated with Brandon's message.

I've talked to many different people who have escaped different groups. And I will say that of the groups that we've been examining and of the people that we've been working with, the ones who come out of Brannum are really, really struggling.

The ones who come out of the other groups, yes, they're struggling. And I'm not going to make light of their journey. It's a hard journey, no matter what group it is. But those who are indoctrinated with Brannumism, it is so incredibly hard because it is so many levels more destructive.

And you have to have a support group. Did you have anybody who was helping you while you were going through all of this? I have a dear friend who, we talk about the word all the time.

I mean, we're just constantly in it. And about 2017, I was doing an online Bible study and actually a course in ministry. And no, I'm not a, no, I'm not a woman preacher. No, I don't go there.

Because the Bible said so. But I sure can share the word it got. And I want to know it before I share it. So I'm reading through all of this. And I was using a different Bible at the time, by the term M and I, NIV or something.

And I run something out of it. And this is the most gentle, sweet Christian man. And after I read that he's stopped. He was real quiet and he said, what the, was that?

And I said, well, I wanted his, I wanted to further exaggerate. I wanted his honest opinion. I said, oh, they're all the same. And boy, did I get an earpolleth? I'm good. You know, people who are never in this would never relate to what you just said.

I do, I still struggle and I avoid reading the King James. I still do. Right now I prefer the ESV, but I'm kind of indifferent. What I really prefer is I'll go back and I'll read some of the, um, there's some study tools online where you can read like the interlinear version.

So you can see the root of how all of the languages are translated. So I prefer to study like that, but just casual reading, I prefer ESV because in my mind, for somebody who was never in this, picture Hitler reading the King James version to you, your entire life with that same screaming tone and clinician, that same, uh, intonation, I meant to say that was exactly what we heard when we heard him reading.

And it was just so, it was like, you know, scratching on the chalkboard. That's how awful it was. So after you left and you realized that not only did he not understand what it was, even what he was reading, he purposefully added things that weren't there to make himself exalted.

And there's so many Bible passages in the New Testament about he who exalts himself. I won't even go into those. When you realize that he was doing the things that he did to exalt himself and he was screaming at you while he did it, it becomes like a cat screeching.

You just can't take it. And so I'm, I relate, I read the ESV, I do study with different tools. And at times I do have to go back and read the King James version because there are certain phrases and passages in the ESV that you'll read it and you think that's not right.

I remember something different. And you have to go back through the translation and say, oh, I see why it was translated like that. And there's also some odd things about it. Some of the words and phrases that they use in the old Queen's English don't actually translate in the same way today as they did back then.

There are examples of kidneys for example that they use entirely different language. So I read the ESV, but that screeching Hitler voice, when you said it, I actually got triggered from that. Well, I love you with all my kidney.

We don't say that anymore, but I want other people to understand, especially women. They're not worthless. God did not let the devil design you. We're designed by the same loving hands that created Adam.

Eve did take of the fruit, whatever that is. I don't think it was what he said it was. I truly believe it was just disobedience because if you read the Bible, that's what you come up with.

They disobeyed. In other words, it wasn't sex like the man tried to claim by adding to the Bible. They could have pulled a cat's tail. It was disobedience that made all the difference. And yes, Eve is the one that is recorded, and I believe every word in the Bible she's recorded is being...

the one who broke that. Where was Adam? Was he protecting her? And I'm not putting blame in you where I'm just evening out the play and field. Where was Adam when she was talking to the serpent? Was he running honey? No, no, no, no, no, no, come here, come here, get away from that. Did he do that? Did he say, Oh, no, no, don't eat it. No, he took a bite also. We're all dirt. I'll never forget whenever I came to that realization. It hit me like a brick wall. I just, you know, we were taught that you had to find all these secret mysteries and

you could unlock the keys of the Bible. It's so weird that you had to turn it into this mystery book when so much of it is just easily plainly read and understood. Even the passage that says it's of no private interpretation means that you can read it and they twisted that into some weird mystery. But coming to the realization that it really didn't matter what Eve did, what Adam and Eve did, I should say. It really didn't matter the fact that the Bible is just simply telling you they disobeyed God and that was that was the big deal. That was the problem that they disobeyed

God. And then this is coming from a person who is preaching who is disobeying God in his very sermons because he's promoting himself. He's pointing to himself and exalting himself. When that hit me, it's really, really hard to listen to more of it. We listened to these recordings at Branham from 1947 to 1965. These recordings were made. We listened to them over and over and over again. And we thought that it was a blessed experience. Like you're talking about your family who healed from the prayer lines, we thought that you could access God through the recordings. That's

how it was. Well, once you pick on the fact that pick up on the fact that he is manipulating people, it's entirely different. You hear the same thing and you're like, I can't believe that I listen to that. That's horrible. What are you saying? The problem is by the time you come to that realization, the damage is already done. And there are people who really struggle from the indoctrination.

There are people who, like myself, you have to get into counseling sometimes, go see a therapist just to try to unravel what they did to your head. And there are times I feel like my head has tangled into spaghetti. I've recommended to people many times, if you've been in this type of movement, you need to find a strong support group that can help you to overcome some of these things. I've been there. And I've helped a lot of people by just explaining that they need to read their Bible. And if you have any questions, maybe we can figure something out. Maybe the Lord

will show this to you in a different way. He showed me that fits your life right now. It's amazing. I saw for the military. I've done that for my no, 15, 20 years. So I have met a lot, a lot of young men and women in the service. And my whole goal is, yes, I'll put the patches on your uniform and I'll let up the waste for you, but you're going to hear the word of God. And we visit while I'm sewing or just not sewing, we just visit because the whole goal is to just let him hear the name of Jesus.

That's really the odd part about this. I grew up in the movement. I know exactly the doctrines, I know exactly the theology that he was preaching. I know why he did it. I've studied the history behind it. And he used the name Jesus. So to the outsider who comes in, they think they're hearing a Christian sermon. He's using the name Jesus, Jesus Christ, what a black Christian. And anybody who thinks along that line, you might think, well, this is a Christian church. These are Christian people, they believe in Christ. But when you have to believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins,

and you must believe in this in time profit, or this Christ is going to destroy you. And we're going to be very angry against you. We're going to cut you off. If you doubt the profit, we're going to cast you out of our circles. I mean, it is awful what they do. It drives people into places where psychologically they're bleeding on the inside. There are people, I've worked with the support groups with people who just are struggling so heavily because the version of God that they've been taught is not the God of the Bible. It's a threatening wrath of vengeance God that is

coming down to just destroy their lives. You're either going to obey our profit or we're going to be destroyed. You're going to be destroyed. That's the type of theology. And that's not the Jesus of the New Testament. So there are people who leave the message and some of these other groups, they leave and they leave God altogether. And they think mistakenly that they're atheist.

There are people who leave and they're actually breaking down a false God. But who's there to lift them back up? That's really the problem. People who are going through this, they're struggling in ways that they should never have been injured in the first place from a church. This is supposed to be a Christian church. I talked to one of my brothers and I realized just how silly the whole thing was because all he could tell me, he's quite a bit younger than me, and all he could tell me when I say, who is Brannum to you? And what he focused on is my spell check didn't put a camp

little beat. And that was his reply. You're being rude. You didn't even capitalize a surname. And I said, well, maybe we can sue Google. I don't know. Let's get back to this. Who was he?

Who is he to you? And he can't answer that. And he was born the November before the December the Brannum was killed. He grew up in it. I get that. You know, I've come to the conclusion that you almost can't be in movement and not believe that William Brannum was God, and you might not outright say it, you might not say Brannum is God, but you believed it in some way, shape, or form because you put him so far above every other human being.

And the way my grandfather would put it, he was a man, but he was more than a man, or he might say, this was God tabernacled in human flesh. So he would always talk about the human, but he would also associate God with the human.

So therefore you have, if you understand how this works, you have a demigod, that's really what they're worshiping, is a demigod. And it's just so sad, it destroys lives, it destroys families. You have multiple siblings, right, and you were able to reconcile with one of your sisters if I remember correctly.

So this one of them, when she was diagnosed with cancer, she called me because I'm the one that prays. And we talked, we talked for two years, and then six weeks before she passed, I went, she wanted me to come and just be with her.

So I lived with her, I stayed on the couch beside her and took care of her and loved her, it was beautiful, it was a wonderful experience because about a year, a little over a year before she passed, she asked me what nobody else would ask me, what do you not like about this man?

What's the one thing? So I started reading scriptures, and she said, but doesn't this mean, and I said, what does it say? Well, it says, and one day she started crying, and she said, I am so sorry for the way I treated you.

I said, don't worry about it, we're good, just follow Christ. And I know it's probably unusual, people don't hear this a lot, but she had a beautiful passing where she was in total peace, and it was good because she got out of it.

And we were able to celebrate the Lord, we just didn't talk about tapes or any of that. Now and then she'd say, do you remember when you said this and that? And I go, yeah, and she'd just start laughing, but it's so ingrained the day after she passed, the same brother I was mentioning was there.

His wife was sitting beside me on the couch, he was sitting in the recliner where she had been for a couple months, and he's rocking it and he says, oh, I'm just so glad that she knew brother, brother, I said, let me tell you something funny about that.

For over a year she didn't, she found Christ, she was saved, and she went home. I can't even imagine how they would have reacted. I have been in similar situations after having left the message, and it's really odd because you would think that you could get around a group of Christian people who are believing in Christ, and you could talk about salvation in the normal way, in the Christian way.

They believed in Christ. and therefore they're saved and they'll actually get angry at you if you were once a message believer and you left and are no longer a message believer that is they have bound their entire view of salvation in that. So if you're a Christian and you're saved because Jesus saved you in their mind it's actually not good enough. His wife jumped up like a jack in the box ran into the kitchen with her face in her hands and my brother looked at me and he said you better be careful you hurt that.

Oh be careful be careful and I said you know what I can talk about any false prophet under the sun and look the ceiling didn't fall and it won't and it still hasn't and it's been years ago.

Yeah that's really the sad part about this. I think there are a lot of people in the movement who would really like to enjoy Christian fellowship with other Christian people but they've actually been trained and manipulated to be so afraid of doing anything that doesn't meet the standards of the movement and what's really sad is now he's dead and gone. Branemas dead and gone. The movement is going further and further and further into destruction and what seems to be happening because most people would just leave this movement as it's not healthy to be in it from mind, body,

and soul. It's not healthy. They have to find new ways of captivating them by fear. So the fear of what's happening in the movement now is so far worse than even whenever I left. It's a dreadful fear. Fear can bind you and you're controllable. Get rid of the fear. Take that love of Christ. Would you see any love in those tapes? Oh he'll pretend it for a while but then he goes right back to his normal self and it's like no. I'm so glad you did this. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

I am so glad you won't even find a picture of me on Facebook. This is how far beyond my limits I have gone but that's okay and I just want the world to know there's freedom and love and joy and peace. Oh yeah, there's life too. But all of this is something that you don't find there.

I got my bangs. I'm not in hell. It's okay. You question everybody but God. Just believe God. Read your Bible. Trust him. He doesn't need anybody else. Yes, there are preachers. Many are saved by listening to preachers but they will they will point you to Christ not them. Absolutely. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org. From more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to

the NAR available on Amazon, Kindle and Automobile.